‘Constable Jarvis for a start.’

‘We have very different ideas of what constitutes as flirting. I am not interested in him.’

‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’

‘Blimey Miley, do you always quote Hamlet when you’re drunk?’ Imogen said.

She was deflecting; the truth was, PC Jarvis had asked her out on a date and she had refused. She hadn’t told Adrian about it and she had assumed he hadn’t noticed anything. At the time, she hadn’t acknowledged the reason why she had said no or the reason why she hadn’t told Adrian. Now, of course, it seemed obvious – it was because of this unspoken thing between them. Her feelings for him had been growing for some time.

Adrian put his cup down and stood up. He walked over to Imogen and reached for her arm. He took her hand in his and ran his thumb across the back. She wanted to kiss him, but she needed to think, too. It was against the rules for colleagues who worked side by side in the department to date. That’s not to say it didn’t happen, of course it did. But Imogen was already on thin ice and had lost out on a promotion because of her relationship with Dean. She had to tread carefully. All she knew right now was that her feelings for Adrian had changed.

‘So, what do we do, Imogen? I know what you’re saying and logically it makes total sense. I’d like to be grown up about this and say we can turn it off if we want to. But it doesn’t really work like that, does it?’

‘How does it work then?’ Imogen said, frustrated that she didn’t have an answer that meant everything could stay the same. She pulled her hand away from him and he went and sat back down; she sat opposite him and watched him drink his coffee.

‘Maybe we should go on a date,’ Adrian said, staring into his drink, refusing to look up. ‘Get to know each other, maybe change perspective.’

‘A date? Are you joking? I see you all the time. If it got back to the DCI, we could be in serious trouble.’

She wasn’t sure what she had been hoping for. All those nights they spent together in the dark, in the morning, pretending it wasn’t happening – it wasn’t healthy. Maybe she wanted him to say it was all a big mistake and he was just using her to get over Lucy, but of course she knew she didn’t want that. She didn’t know what she wanted.

‘There’s something else we need to talk about, of course,’ Adrian said.

‘What’s that?’

Adrian looked at her. ‘Dean. What if he comes back?’

‘It doesn’t matter if he comes back or not,’ she said, not entirely convincing herself.

She had finished with Dean because of his criminal tendencies being incompatible with her career choice. He wasn’t about to change and neither was she, so there was nothing more to think about when it came to Dean.